Endeavor Invested covertly in Twitter earlier this year, owned by Elon Musk
Musk and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel are friends, and the Tesla CEO previously served on Endeavor’s board.
A source familiar with the situation confirms that Endeavor, the company that owns WME and the UFC, made an investment in Twitter earlier this year.
This would be one of the first investments made since Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought the business late last year. His family office is said to have looked for additional investors willing to join at the same share price that Musk paid after buying Twitter for $44 billion. Although the amount invested by Endeavor and the price per share it paid is unclear, the source claimed that the investment had no significant impact on Endeavor’s operations.
Musk is very familiar with Endeavor because he served on its board of directors after the company’s IPO in 2021.
In order to concentrate on his other businesses, which in addition to Tesla and Twitter also include SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, Musk resigned from the board of Endeavor last year.
A picture of Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel beating Musk up on a boat off the coast of Greece went viral last summer. Ari Emanuel is also close friends with Musk, and the mega-agent is thought to have pushed for a resolution between Musk and Twitter’s board of directors when the two parties were at odds over the deal.
Under Musk, Twitter has been erratic, with recurrent themes of brand safety and stability issues. The service is still active, though, and there is still no other platform quite like it.
In spite of the fact that it is thought that Musk’s deal has hurt Twitter’s advertising revenue, celebrities, and public figures continue to use the platform on a daily basis, as do media companies like Disney and Warner Bros., and Discovery.
There are other outside investors, even though Musk is the sole owner of Twitter. After Musk’s deal was completed, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey kept his $1 billion investment in the company, and other investors like Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal also carried over their stakes.
The initial news of Endeavor’s Twitter investment came from Axios.